Groups with harsh initiations — fraternities, elite units, some professions — tend to command stronger loyalty than groups that are easy to join. Dissonance theory says why. What is the mechanism?

C. Effort justification, since the group's value is easier to adjust

The suffering cannot be undone, so the valuation moves instead, exactly the insufficient-justification logic that made a dollar more persuasive than twenty. Option 3 names something real that is not dissonance, and the experimental version separates them by making the ordeal solitary; the effect survives.